Dewey-Hagborg's odd habit has a larger purpose. The 30-year-old PhD student, studying electronic arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, extracts DNA from each piece of evidence she collects and enters this data into a computer program, which churns out a model of the face of the person who left the hair, fingernail, cigarette or gum behind.

The proper way to say this out loud involves slowing down and making air quotes with your fingers when you read the underlined section. Rolling your eyes would be acceptable as well.

From this sequence, Dewey-Hagborg gathers information about the person's ancestry, gender, eye color, propensity to be overweight and other traits related to facial morphology, such as the space between one's eyes. "I have a list of about 40 or 50 different traits that I have either successfully analyzed or I am in the process of working on right now," she says.

So really broad characteristics. Not the shape of the face or nose or anything like that.

Yes please:"She sends the mitochondrial DNA to a lab to get sequenced, and the lab returns about 400 base pair sequences of guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine (G, A, T and C)."

400 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA? That seems like enough to get a good representation.

Sarcasm, right? Because assuming that she can pinpoint a start codon to get a frame set, and assuming that she managed to miss the non-coding areas, she could get a sequence of only 133 amino acids out of those 400 base pairs. That's not much at all... Certainly not enough to get multiple traits.

FTFA:the artist took a crash course in molecular biology at Genspace, a do-it-yourself biology lab in Brooklyn

There are do-it-yourself bio labs out there ? People have enough problem with DIY projects for their houses. I don't think I want these kinds of people messing around with biology. Seriously, this is probably how the zombie virus will get to us.

ThatGuyOverThere:Yes please: "She sends the mitochondrial DNA to a lab to get sequenced, and the lab returns about 400 base pair sequences of guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine (G, A, T and C)."

400 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA? That seems like enough to get a good representation.

Sarcasm, right? Because assuming that she can pinpoint a start codon to get a frame set, and assuming that she managed to miss the non-coding areas, she could get a sequence of only 133 amino acids out of those 400 base pairs. That's not much at all... Certainly not enough to get multiple traits.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but that sounds like 400 sequences with an indeterminate number of bp each. It's still way too small, but if you got like, a really cheap SNP chip you could make a few inferences. Not any of the ones she's made, but a few.

Kinek:ThatGuyOverThere: Yes please: "She sends the mitochondrial DNA to a lab to get sequenced, and the lab returns about 400 base pair sequences of guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine (G, A, T and C)."

400 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA? That seems like enough to get a good representation.

Sarcasm, right? Because assuming that she can pinpoint a start codon to get a frame set, and assuming that she managed to miss the non-coding areas, she could get a sequence of only 133 amino acids out of those 400 base pairs. That's not much at all... Certainly not enough to get multiple traits.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but that sounds like 400 sequences with an indeterminate number of bp each. It's still way too small, but if you got like, a really cheap SNP chip you could make a few inferences. Not any of the ones she's made, but a few.

Clearly, hyphens are needed. This is what comes of letting a non-scientist who lacks sufficient training in journalism journal science - or at least one artist's notion of science.

You know, why ARENT we doing this? I mean, the only facial composites you hear about are the ones built from eyewitness statements. If this technology is inherently cheap enough to use for art, why aren't we using it for forensic identification?

Somaticasual:Summoner101: You all joke, but this is how we finally find DB Cooper

You know, why ARENT we doing this? I mean, the only facial composites you hear about are the ones built from eyewitness statements. If this technology is inherently cheap enough to use for art, why aren't we using it for forensic identification?

Kinek:Somaticasual: Summoner101: You all joke, but this is how we finally find DB Cooper

You know, why ARENT we doing this? I mean, the only facial composites you hear about are the ones built from eyewitness statements. If this technology is inherently cheap enough to use for art, why aren't we using it for forensic identification?